“Energy is the Master Resource – the foundation for everything we eat, make, ship and do. With abundant, reliable, affordable energy, almost anything is possible, and we can improve, enrich and safeguard countless lives. Without it, jobs, living standards, basic rights and modern civilization are imperiled.”

Driessen also notes that laws and policies that restrict access to America’s abundant energy resources “block the door to opportunity, creating unnecessary and unacceptable obstacles to the natural, justifiable desire of poor and minority Americans to share in the American Dream. They tarnish the golden years of senior citizens, forcing too many to choose between heating and eating.”

He also examines the oft-ignored risks of climate change policies, reveals the devastating economic effects of a cap-tax-and-trade system, and exposes popular renewable energy myths.

This detailed 85-page report explains how the EPA failed to describe the scientific reality of natural processes and multi-factorial controls that govern the cycling of mercury (Hg) and the ultimate biomethylation and bioaccumulation processes for methylmercury (MeHg). Soon concludes that “EPA’s proposed NESHAP provides no detectable beneficial outcomes in the control of mercury emissions (even accepting EPA’s own risk-benefit analysis without a challenge). The new rules will result in a major economic impact, harm American public health by creating exaggerated and unfounded fears about eating fish that are beneficial in everyone’s diet, and further degrade the essential role of science in informing public policy.”

Recent Articles

Oil prices at the pump fell hard, then began creeping back up — even though crude oil prices have not rebounded. One reason is an explosion at an ExxonMobil refinery in California that has bumped that state’s price by 20 cents a gallon, but if the steelworkers union strike expands the impacts could grow . Meanwhile, the Saudis, who concocted the scheme that saw the dramatic drop in prices, are happy to see the rise in the price at the pump.

The enemies of fracking, the Keystone pipeline, and other fossil fuel related activities start with wild-eyed “Deep Green Resistance” types who oppose the entirety of Western civilization (even agriculture), include those with vested interests in alternative energy sources, and even include foreign governments (like Putin’s Russia), who recognize that cheaper oil and gas prices will hurt their economies and weaken their grip on nearby dependent countries. Naming enemies empowers those who want to defeat them.

President Obama will soon have to decide whether to please big labor or Big Green — and his risk is that if he chooses Big Green over big labor and then the labor unions push Democrats who depend on their votes to vote to override his veto of the Keystone Pipeline authorization, he loses big time. The clock is ticking — and the stakes are high. Meanwhile, President-in-waiting Hillary Clinton is silent … perhaps fearing the same Hobson’s choice. The huge drop in the oil price — which some now claim is a further reason to ignore Keystone — is on the verge of a quick rebound thanks to Obama’s feckless foreign “policy.” Stay tuned!

Is it merely a coincidence that millions of dollars of Russian money have been laundered and forwarded to anti-fossil fuel radical environmentalists to fight exploration and development by the United States of Alaska’s vast oil and gas and minerals reserves? While Russia plans to seize the entire Arctic for its own use, the United States shuts down all future development over nearly 20 million acres of land and sea — for absolutely zero environmental benefit, especially since Russia will likely be able to exploit much of that same territory anyway. Just as bac, Obama did this despite universal opposition from Alaska’s elected officials — robbing the state of much-needed jobs and revenues. Hopefully, this theft and giveaway to Russia can be reversed.

OPEC’s Secretary General Abdulla al-Badri last month predicted oil prices will rebound to as much as $200 per barrel, a figure CFACT advisor Marita Noon suggests could only come about if terrorism and internal strife force shutdowns of major oil-producing states such as al-Badri’s native Libya and other Middle Eastern nations vulnerable to radical assaults. Otherwise, Noon notes, as soon as the price jumps about $70 per barrel, the nimble U.S. wildcatters will step up their production again and hold the oil price well below al-Badri’s predicted $200 per barrel.

The radical Green push for colleges and universities to divest themselves from investment in fossil fuel companies is misguided, immoral, lethal, and, yes, racist. While Western civilization has seen an 11-fold increase in wealth, a doubling of lifespans, and health and prosperity unprecedented in human history, nearly 1.5 billion still live without the benefits of modern technology. While China (which will ignore the bigots) has linked nearly its entire population to the power grid, over 300 million in India and more than twice that number in sub-Saharan Africa lack even the simplest of modern amenities that electric power and motorized transportation afford. CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen asks, “What right do divestment activists and climate change alarmists have to deny Earth’s most destitute people access to electricity and motor fuels, jobs, and better lives?”

The radical Green push for colleges and universities to divest themselves from investment in fossil fuel companies is misguided, immoral, lethal, and, yes, racist. While Western civilization has seen an 11-fold increase in wealth, a doubling of lifespans, and health and prosperity unprecedented in human history, nearly 1.5 billion still live without the benefits of modern technology. While China (which will ignore the bigots) has linked nearly its entire population to the power grid, over 300 million in India and more than twice that number in sub-Saharan Africa lack even the simplest of modern amenities that electric power and motorized transportation afford. CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen asks, “What right do divestment activists and climate change alarmists have to deny Earth’s most destitute people access to electricity and motor fuels, jobs, and better lives?”

The Obama Administration, through the corrupted Environmental Protection Agency, promised to kill the U.S. coal industry and they are already far along toward their goal. Along with it, they are wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy and threatening power outages of mammoth proportions. To justify this, they cite so-called scientific studies that are kept secret so that their findings cannot be easily challenged. But there’s more — other job-killing regulations also not backed by sound, peer reviewable science — that will take the U.S. further away from long-term prosperity. Can this onslaught be stopped or even slowed down?

CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen says that the Obama Administration is continuing, even revving up, its campaign against domestic energy production with new EPA regulations on the horizon that would shutter much of the nation’s coal industry and do great harm to oil and gas production; he also promised to veto any legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Moreover, the Obama progressive mentality is so pervaseive that international lending and donor agencies (the UN, OPIC, etc.) are holding poor, developing countries hostage to wind, solar, and biofuel projects that cannot lift them out of poverty — and thus these elites are damning the world’s poorest people to eternal poverty when true prosperity through fossil fuels is staring them in the face.

The United States is likely to see brownouts and blackouts thanks to the shuttering of coal-fired power plants (and who knows, maybe even gas-fired plants) that are part of an Obama Administration effort to depower the nation to satisfy environmental extremists and to satisfy his own desire to diminish the role of the United States in world affairs. The EPA is his tool of choice (along with other federal agencies whose policies rarely are blocked by either elected officials or the courts). And as the supply of electricity dwindles, the price of power will rise dramatically, with the greatest negative impacts on the poor, the elderly, and the disabled.

Included in the Obama Administration’s “Unified Agenda” for 2015 are new, job-killing standards for ground-level ozone that are the product of a friendly lawsuit from the Sierra Club. These rules the President put on hold in 2011 in an effort to reduce “regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover” — or maybe for fear they would harm his reelection chances in 2012. The new regulations will mean that, depending on the final rule, 76% to 96% of the country—including some national parks where the natural background levels for ozone are 65 to 67 parts per billion—will be out of compliance. This will deal a crushing blow to U.S. economic recovery — and the Sierra Club and the President know and heartily approve of this tragic outcome.

New Englanders are gambling with the weather, and they may soon be paying a heavy price — both in dollars for heating their homes in very cold winter weather in 2014-15, and in loss of power due to brownouts or blackouts should even one remaining power plant experience any problems (or in the case of exceedingly high demand on a given day). The chief reason: Green enmity that shut down coal and nuclear power plants and has slowed construction of new natural gas fired power plants, together with the severe unreliability of wind and solar, especially in extreme weather conditions.

CFACT advisor Marita Noon suggests six major areas of confrontation and change now the the Republican Party controls both the House and Senate: the long-awaited (and perhaps too late) approval for the Keystone XL pipeline; a major expansion of oil and gas and minerals development on federal lands; lifting the current ban on U.S. oil and gas exports; reining in the EPA’s power, especially as it applies to the proposed Clean Power Plan and the expanded Waters of the United States regulations; major reforms to the Endangered Species Act that would turn landowners from enemies to protectors of threatened and endangered species; and an end to climate alarmism as official U.S. Congress policy. Nearly all of these changes are expected to be vigorously fought by President Obama and the White House.

So the UN IPCC wants us to stop using fossil fuels entirely by 2100 — whether or not we will need them. Alan Caruba recommends that everyone read Alex Epstein’s great new book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. Epstein argues that we have used the power of fossil-fueled machines to build a durable civilization that is highly resilient to extreme heat, extreme cold, floods, storms, and so on” — and that this demonstrates the foolishness of those who oppose their use.

Paul Driessen lays out the case for ending the ban on overseas shipment of crude petroleum, and in the process notes how shipping crude and refined petroleum overseas would be a boon to the U.S. economy and might also prod European nations to rethink their own policies towards energy production.

The myths about hydraulic fracturing (fracking) are myriad and cynical — spread by haters of fossil fuels and by those who want to see the United States crippled as a result of shutting down the bulk of the traditional energy sector in favor of heavily subsidized “renewables” and forcing a massive shrinkage of living standards for most Americans (but not the elites). The truth is that fracking has evolved into a virtually benign operation that relies heavily on brackish water that is processed and often reused.

For decades, policymakers have been concerned about America’s over-reliance on fossil fuel imports from other parts of the world. But thanks to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, many of these concerns are now being alleviated.

The process of “hydraulic fracturing,” known as fracking, has come under attack by activists for allegedly contaminating drinking water. But a new study by the Department of Energy should allay these concerns.

Look closely at the energy-related news stories of the past dozen or so days, and, between the lines, you’ll see a theme: government makes predictions and assertions that cannot be backed up by data to protect or project preferred messaging.

Finding affordable and abundant sources of domestic energy has become a big priority in recent years. And while many options are being looked at, one that has taken the nation by storm is the development of shale gas.

Oil prices at the pump fell hard, then began creeping back up — even though crude oil prices have not rebounded. One reason is an explosion at an ExxonMobil refinery in California that has bumped that state’s price by 20 cents a gallon, but if the steelworkers union strike expands the impacts could grow . Meanwhile, the Saudis, who concocted the scheme that saw the dramatic drop in prices, are happy to see the rise in the price at the pump.

The enemies of fracking, the Keystone pipeline, and other fossil fuel related activities start with wild-eyed “Deep Green Resistance” types who oppose the entirety of Western civilization (even agriculture), include those with vested interests in alternative energy sources, and even include foreign governments (like Putin’s Russia), who recognize that cheaper oil and gas prices will hurt their economies and weaken their grip on nearby dependent countries. Naming enemies empowers those who want to defeat them.

President Obama will soon have to decide whether to please big labor or Big Green — and his risk is that if he chooses Big Green over big labor and then the labor unions push Democrats who depend on their votes to vote to override his veto of the Keystone Pipeline authorization, he loses big time. The clock is ticking — and the stakes are high. Meanwhile, President-in-waiting Hillary Clinton is silent … perhaps fearing the same Hobson’s choice. The huge drop in the oil price — which some now claim is a further reason to ignore Keystone — is on the verge of a quick rebound thanks to Obama’s feckless foreign “policy.” Stay tuned!

Is it merely a coincidence that millions of dollars of Russian money have been laundered and forwarded to anti-fossil fuel radical environmentalists to fight exploration and development by the United States of Alaska’s vast oil and gas and minerals reserves? While Russia plans to seize the entire Arctic for its own use, the United States shuts down all future development over nearly 20 million acres of land and sea — for absolutely zero environmental benefit, especially since Russia will likely be able to exploit much of that same territory anyway. Just as bac, Obama did this despite universal opposition from Alaska’s elected officials — robbing the state of much-needed jobs and revenues. Hopefully, this theft and giveaway to Russia can be reversed.

The radical Green push for colleges and universities to divest themselves from investment in fossil fuel companies is misguided, immoral, lethal, and, yes, racist. While Western civilization has seen an 11-fold increase in wealth, a doubling of lifespans, and health and prosperity unprecedented in human history, nearly 1.5 billion still live without the benefits of modern technology. While China (which will ignore the bigots) has linked nearly its entire population to the power grid, over 300 million in India and more than twice that number in sub-Saharan Africa lack even the simplest of modern amenities that electric power and motorized transportation afford. CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen asks, “What right do divestment activists and climate change alarmists have to deny Earth’s most destitute people access to electricity and motor fuels, jobs, and better lives?”

CFACT policy analyst Marita Noon reports that President Obama’s made dash to prevent U.S. oil and gas activities in the very profitable Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) may stem more from Russian money funneled to U.S.-based environmental nonprofits — and the desire of the President to please such groups — than from any intelligent rationale for declaring these rich lands off limits to the minimal development needed for resource extraction. Russia, meanwhile, is conducting military-scale operations in a possible effort to take physical control of the entire Arctic region.

Energy policy analyst Marita Noon, a CFACT advisor, points out that India has no intention of kowtowing to political correctness in developing its energy sector. Instead, “India rejects arguments by Green activists that it must move away from coal energy, saying the alternative would be to keep its citizens in poverty.” Meanwhile, President Obama is intent on creating energy poverty in the U.S. through a regulatory assault on coal, oil and gas, and other conventional energy producers — on top of his intention to veto legislation authorizing the Keystone pipeline. Should he get his way, Americans will be anticipating blackouts and brownouts and higher energy prices across the board to go along with the energy shortages his policies are sure to create.

CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen says that the Obama Administration is continuing, even revving up, its campaign against domestic energy production with new EPA regulations on the horizon that would shutter much of the nation’s coal industry and do great harm to oil and gas production; he also promised to veto any legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Moreover, the Obama progressive mentality is so pervaseive that international lending and donor agencies (the UN, OPIC, etc.) are holding poor, developing countries hostage to wind, solar, and biofuel projects that cannot lift them out of poverty — and thus these elites are damning the world’s poorest people to eternal poverty when true prosperity through fossil fuels is staring them in the face.

The Fukushima disaster has “led to some wild speculation on the widespread dangers of Fukushima radiation on the internet… I’m here to tell you that these posts are just plain garbage. While there are terrible things that happened around the Fukushima Power Plant in Japan; Alaska, Hawaii and the West Coast aren’t in any danger. These posts were meant to scare people (and possibly written by terrified authors). They did just that, but there is a severe lack of facts in these posts. Which is why I am here to give you the facts, and nothing but the facts.”

Anti-nuclear activists do not want the public to know the truth. Fukushima showed that a nuclear plant can take the maximum punch of nature’s brutality. Yet the media and the anti-nukes enjoy stoking the fear.

After Denmark (Europe’s star wind energy performer), Germany boasts (sic!) the highest power costs in Europe — Danes and Germans alike pay about 300% more than Americans for electric power that is increasingly unreliable. The Australians, who had charted a similar course, threw out their Green government. But what will Americans do?

When the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, Japan was damaged by a major earthquake, many expected long-term radiation problems. But scientists recently brought together by a UN scientific committee found Japan’s general public and the vast majority of workers at Fukushima are unlikely to suffer any future health effects linked to small radiation leaks.

A few years ago, Germany was “fully committed” to the EU’s goal of ending fossil fuel use. It was building lots of wind turbines, and even some solar farms despite its often-cloudy skies. After the tsunami, Prime Minister Angela Merckel announced Germany would phase out its nuclear plants quickly, implying more power from renewables.

Like a phoenix rising from ashes, nuclear power has seen a renaissance in recent years after decades of bad publicity. And while the accident at Fukushima cast an ominous shadow over its future, experts are now applying some important lessons to new designs.

Dr. Kelvin Kemm, a South African nuclear physicist and CFACT advisor, explains on Kenyan TV that Africans need to greatly increase the availability of affordable electricity and do not need Europeans telling them “No.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel just decided to lay out additional funds to push that nation to 40% cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, an action in line with its Energiewende goals to move beyond fossil fuels. Except it cannot. Germany has done too much too quickly —

The giant Ivanpah solar array in California was financed with a $1.6 billion construction loan from the U.S. Treasury, but the plant has been so unproductive that its owners have successfully begged for loan repayment delays and now want a $539 million federal grant so they can make their first — already late — three payments on the initial loan. But prospects for long-term viability of Ivanpah remain poor, given that the plant’s poor performance and the fact that it is killing birds at an alarming rate. As Reason’s Julian Morris, says, “They’re already paying less than the market rate. Now demanding or asking for a subsidy in the form of a grant directly paying off the loan is an egregious abuse.”

Back in 2007, states passed renewable portfolio standards at the same time the George W. Bush Administration was patting itself on the back for enacting the renewable fuels standard — aka the ethanol mandate. Seven years later, most people see the flaws in this energy strategy, but the EPA continues unabated in its quest to push more ethanol into America’s automobiles.

With key players like former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and former Vice President Al Gore on board, no wonder Spanish-based Abengoa Solar was able to garner $2.8 billion in federal loan guarantees plus a $818 million federal grant to help it compete with other energy suppliers. But recently, the firm has been under investigation for immigration and employment fraud, using outdated technology, and making dangerous design decisions. But will California bestow a major contract on this lawless firm on May 7? Stay tuned.

Alan Caruba argues that President Obama is waging a real war against conventional U.S. energy sources — coal, oil. and natural gas — but in ways that benefit his friends and punish his enemies. His solar initiatives have mostly been money laundering operations (at least, effectively) like Solyndra; his continued stalling on the Keystone XL pipeline benefits billionaire Warren Buffett; and his administration has issued the fewest number of onshore oil and natural gas leases and drilling permits on federal lands since the government began maintaining leasing and drilling permit records.

Marita Noon rates the value of the options listed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for achieving U.S. energy independence, and then lists several options that might really make a difference.

The uncertainty of the future of the wind energy production tax credit is but one reason that wind turbine projects are falling apart. Cape Wind, the huge Massachusetts project opposed by the Kennedy clan, now looks dead after two power companies filed to withdraw their contracts because the investors missed deadlines. Minnesota’s Minwind project is now bankrupt because the investors cannot even afford the maintenance costs.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel just decided to lay out additional funds to push that nation to 40% cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, an action in line with its Energiewende goals to move beyond fossil fuels. Except it cannot. Germany has done too much too quickly —

A year after the Congress allowed the wind power production tax credit to expire, the American Wind Energy Association is making a last-ditch effort to renew the PTC, which apparently is necessary for its survival. Moreover, the conditions that fostered the creation of this tax credit — fears of dependence on foreign oil — have long since passed, thanks to the fracking revolution. As CFACT analyst Marita Noon says, it is time for the wind industry to grow up.

Back in 2007, states passed renewable portfolio standards at the same time the George W. Bush Administration was patting itself on the back for enacting the renewable fuels standard — aka the ethanol mandate. Seven years later, most people see the flaws in this energy strategy, but the EPA continues unabated in its quest to push more ethanol into America’s automobiles.

Governments have gambled massively on wind energy claiming it emits less carbon dioxide and that this will help prevent dangerous global warming. Incredibly, this claim is not supported by cost-benefit analysis.

Marita Noon provides a laundry list of reasons to ignore calls from fire-breathing wind power shills who want to reinstate the wind power production tax credit — and thus rip off the U.S. Treasury to build noneconomic wind farms that also cause health and safety problems and still rely on backup generation due to the intermittent nature of wind speed.

Ever since the wind power Production Tax Credit expired last year, the lobbying to restore the costly, wasteful tax credit has been intense. Recently, 26 Senators and 118 House members signed a letter urgning its restoration — but whether they will succeed is an entirely different matter. As a result, even GE’s Jeffrey Immelt is talking about “a world that’s unsubsidized.”